A California judge ordered Valve to comply with Apple’s recent request for financial data on more than 400 Steam titles.
Earlier this month, Apple approached Steam for data on the annual sale of apps, IAPs and external products, along with details on Steam’s revenue.
The iPhone maker said the information would be used in its long legal battle with Epic, allowing it to calculate “the total market size for Epic’s digital distribution channels”. Apple explained that it has already contacted Samsung with a similar request, which the court found relevant to the issue at hand.
Valve opposed Apple and basically told the company that it did not see how its data – extracted from a completely different platform and market – would be relevant to the case.
“Somehow, in a dispute over mobile apps, a PC game maker that doesn’t compete in the mobile market or sell ‘apps’ is being portrayed as a key figure,” said Valve. “It is not.”
As reported by Kotaku, however, a judge has now told Valve to share data for 436 specific titles sold by Steam from 2017 onwards.
Judge Hixson said Valve has until mid-March to comply with the order, telling its legal team that “Apple salted the land with subpoenas, so don’t worry, it’s not just you”.
Epic and Apple will move on in May 2021 to resolve their legal dispute, which arose after the Fifteen days manufacturer tried to get around App Store platform fees using third-party payment methods – asking Apple to pull Fifteen days of their platforms.